Cross Cultural Connections

Many of Jordi Savall's projects for his Hesperion XXI straddle that early music / world music divide and have plenty to appeal to lovers of both genres. This particular one, Orient - Occident 1200 - 1700, veers quite far into world music territory. It celebrates the shared cultural legacy of Arab and jew, Muslim and West and laments what was lost in the second half of the 15th century with the fall of both Sepharad And Al-Andalus in Spain and Byzantium in the east. The disk attempts to rebuild some of the bridges between shared heritages. There are pieces from Turkey, Afghanistan, Morocco, Iran and the Jewish diaspora, together with others from medieval Italy and Galicia and even courtly Spain. The musicians involved come from similarly disparate backgrounds; Afghanistan ( a wonder in itself post Taliban ), Israel, Greece, the wonderful oud virtuoso Driss El Maloumi from Morocco and the Catalan Savall himself. As well as the already mentioned ouds, the instrumentation includes rubab, transverse flute, santur, saz, viol and archlute plus the varied percussion effects of Pedro Estevan. I noted the east west connections on the disk of Armenian dances I posted about yesterday and those connections are made even more explicit here.